Sanitizing film violates copyrights

July 14, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled. Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, U.S District Judge Richard P. Matsch said in a decision released July 6 in Denver. "Their (studios and directors) objective ... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit, including CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms, to stop "producing, manufacturing, creating" and renting edited movies. The businesses also had to turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days of the ruling. "We're disappointed," CleanFlicks chief executive Ray Lines said. "This is a typical case of David versus Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight." CleanFlicks produces and distributes sanitized copies of Hollywood films on DVD by burning edited versions of movies onto blank discs. The scrubbed films are sold over the Internet and to video stores. The controversy began in 1998 when the owners of Sunrise Family Video began deleting scenes from "Titanic" that showed a naked Kate Winslet. Directors can feel vindicated by the ruling, Director's Guild of America president Michael Apted said. "Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor," he said.